re: The Fly Fishing Thread: Questions, pics, discussion all here

Hunters are your best friend. Deer tails. Ducks, turkeys, etc.
A customer comes and fishes with guides out of the shop my son works at every year. One day, the customer didn't have a trip booked. His guide told him to go fish with my son when he got off work in the shop. They fished a couple of afternoons. A couple of months later, the customer shipped my son a box of tying supplies from a fly shop he was liquidating. (He was the money. The sweat equity partner had died). There was easily $2,000 of retail tying supplies. The next winter, another box came. Needless to say, he makes time to fish with his friend when he makes his annual visit.

Freshwater

Unfortunately the nearest shop is more than an hour away. So, Internet it is for me at the moment.

Middle of nowhere Ohio at the moment. I think the closest shop is in Dayton and that's a good 2 hour drive.

Also, I spent most of the morning trying to tie a clouser minnow and whoever said in here that less is more when it came to materials was telling the absolute truth. I've also learned that deer hair is a pain in the arse to work with. In the end I had something that at least looked like a baby bass. Sort of. I've got the wooly bugger down though. Hopefully I can get the minnow down soon and then move onto the dahlberg diver. Since I mainly bass fish those seem to be the three most important to learn.

Zac, there will be people close by who tie. You need to meet them. People often swap materials, etc and enjoy getting new people into it. See if there is a fly club near you.

Alert for anyone looking to pick up a Winston at an insane price

LINK

Are you raising the rod tip to set the hook?

You need to work on the strip set. Raise the entire rod without really raising the tip a set with your strip hand.

you should feel the hit with your stripping hand

Best you can bury the hook with the stripping hand. If you are at the back end of a strip raise the whole rod parallel to the water you you can get a little better set with the stripping hand. Then with the rod high and parallel to the water clear the line.

If your rod has enough backbone, failing to stripset shouldn't cost you slot redfish. If you want to learn, concentrate on keeping the rod tip in the water when you're stripping. When the fish eats, take your time, grab the line, and pull. It'll become natural after a while.


Unrelated, but I'm selling a purple/blue size III Allen Omega with 300yds of blue gelspun and Rio GT line if anyone is interested. $400.